September Fair Read online

  Apparently, civil disobedience was in his blood. He was the son of Chandra Hopkins and Chad Jacobs, the founding members of GreenFreedom, an international group legendary for their outrageous animal and earth freedom acts. The most famous incident was chaining thirty people to the deck of an oil rig out at sea until the company agreed to pay retribution for a recent oil spill that destroyed miles of coastline and killed thousands of seabirds, but there were hundreds more examples.

  The rest of my research didn’t reveal anything else remarkable, but I couldn’t help ruminating over the relative mildness of picketing a state fair. Aeon’s gig here seemed tame for someone of his counterculture stature, unless there was a grander scheme, say the murder of a Milkfed Mary? I pushed the thought away as soon as it appeared. Aeon had saved me from a bull goring today.

  In an effort to find likelier suspects, I yanked out my notebook and flipped to the page with Linda Gerritt’s number. It was almost nine o’clock, and I hoped I wasn’t calling too late. She picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. You don’t know me. My name is Mira James, and I’m covering the Minnesota State Fair for my local newspaper, the Battle Lake Recall. Do you have time to answer a question or two?”

  “I suppose, but I’m not there this year. I broke my right arm.”

  “That’s what I’m calling about. This is the first fair where you haven’t been the head carver, right?”

  She clucked. “It’s true, and what a year to miss. That poor Pederson girl died right in the booth.”

  “Yeah, I know. I talked to your replacement, Glenda, today. She’s still pretty shook up.”

  “I know. But she’s doing a good job. I stopped by today to look at her first two carvings. Beautiful work.”

  “I agree,” I said, crossing my fingers. I just wasn’t an appreciator of butter art. “Can I ask you how you broke your arm?”

  “No suspicious circumstances, if that’s what you’re wondering. I fell off my shoe crossing the street. Damn clogs.”

  Well. That was about as innocent a way to incapacitate yourself as there could be. “Sorry to hear that. Thanks for talking to me, though. I hope you heal soon.” With my phone still in hand, I decided to follow up on another lead. Three rings, then four. Then five. I looked at the digital clock across the trailer. It was after ten p.m. in Florida. I hoped I wasn’t calling too late.

  “Hello?” The connection was scratchy, and it sounded like the woman speaking was in a crowd. “Hello?”

  “Hi. Is this Shelby? Shelby Spoczkowski from Minnesota?”

  A pause. “Hold on.” When she came back on the line, there was still some static, but the crowd noises had disappeared. “Who is this?”

  “I’m a reporter covering the murder of Ashley Pederson, recently crowned Milkfed Mary.”

  “I’d heard about that.” A click followed by an inhale came down the line. She’d lit a cigarette. “You’re reaching pretty far back for a story, though. I haven’t been connected to the pageant since the Seventies.”

  “You moved to Florida afterward?”

  “Not right away. I stayed around home till I met my husband. He moved us to Florida and then dumped me for a Barbie doll with fake boobs. I didn’t know a soul out here.”

  “You didn’t remarry?”

  “No reason to buy the cow when you can get the milk for free.” She chuckled, which turned into a cough. “But you didn’t call to ask about my personal life.”

  “No. I called to ask what you know about Janice Opatz.”

  “The only Janice I know was Janice Klepper. She was involved in the Milkfed Mary pageant the same year as I was.”

  “Are you still in touch with her?”

  “Not really. Is she in trouble?”

  “No, not at all. I just want to make sure I get the facts straight on everyone. Janice was your first runner-up?” There was more wheezing on the other end of the line, and it took me a second or two to realize she was laughing. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, you had to have been there, I guess. Janice wasn’t first runner-up. She wasn’t even a contestant.”

  My heart picked up its pace. “What?”

  “Janice’s older sister was the first runner-up the year I won. Barbara Klepper. Blonde, blue-eyed, the whole package. Too bad she was a snake. Slept around with everyone’s boyfriend, including her sister’s. Janice idolized Barbara, followed her everywhere, begged her way into being a gofer for the pageant chaperone so she could spend more time in her sister’s shadow. She refused to believe it when she found out her sister had done the dirty with her boyfriend.”

  “How’d Janice find that out?”

  Shelby paused in her smoking, and I heard a stamp and a click as she put out the first and lit a second cigarette. “I told her. I felt sorry for her. She was a bit of an ugly duckling and had the strangest quirks. For example, she’d rub her hands together endlessly when she was agitated, like she was washing them but there was no water. She just about wore her skin off her hands when I told her about Barbara. She wouldn’t hear it, of course, and she was so ticked off at me for badmouthing her sister that she put warm Nair on my eyebrows that night while I was asleep. I never felt a thing, and when I woke up and washed my face, my eyebrows came off with the water.” She started her wheeze-laugh again. “It felt like the end of the world at the time. Funny what’s important to you when you’re young.”

  “How’d they know it was Janice?”

  “They found the bottle under the extra bed in the dormitory where the chaperone was letting her stay. Janice was never the brightest bulb.”

  “Did she get fired from her gofer job?”

  “She didn’t own up to it until after the incident. By then, everyone was feeling too sorry for her to punish her.”

  “The incident?”

  Another drag off the cigarette, this one deeper than the previous ones. “Her sister, Barbara? She hanged herself the day after we all got crowned. There was a rumor she was pregnant and didn’t know what to do, but that might have just been a rumor. You know how those things go.” Her voice trailed off.

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. The pageant directors felt so bad for Janice they let her stay on. I heard she ended up as the chaperone a couple years later, after the original one retired.”

  “Yeah. Crazy world.”

  “Yeah.” I could hear Shelby’s thoughts tumbling on the other end, reminiscing.

  “Well, that’s about all I needed to know.”

  “I can’t have been very helpful.” She took a final drag off her cigarette. I didn’t hear her light another.

  I was still reeling. “It’s actually been nice to talk to a woman with some perspective on the Milkfed Mary pageant. I appreciate your time.”

  “No problem. Take care.”

  “You too.” I put down the phone, trying to figure out where this information about Janice fit. It seemed like it was an important piece in the puzzle, but really, it just told me that she’d had a hard life and was unstable in her past and a liar now. That wasn’t much to go on. I clicked over to my e-mail in an effort to rid my brain of negative thoughts, and it worked. I was greeted with a sight that made my heart beat with both trepidation and excitement: I had another e-mail from Johnny.

  Dear Mira:

  Battle Lake’s not the same without you. I went to the library yesterday to get a book on canning salsa, and the place was too clean. Curtis says it’s all his doing, but I see the ladies from the Senior Sunset doing the actual work. I’m looking forward to seeing you Saturday and hope we’re still on. We need to talk—I’ve got something on my mind. Miss you.

  I read the first and last lines seven times each. I didn’t care what was in between. Johnny was breaking down my defenses. In fact, it was amazing I’d held out this long. After all, I called Battle Lake my home, the land where no one dares to be single. Around there, a guy and a gal called it fate when they ended up at the same bar two nights in a ro
w, true love if they liked the same bands and smoked the same brand of cigarettes. I tell you, it took courage to be single in Battle Lake. Johnny was making me think I didn’t need to be brave any more, but then again, what had he meant by “we need to talk”? That’s never good. Isn’t a general misunderstanding better than a direct confrontation, at least when it came to intimate relationships?

  I wrote several replies, ranging from flirty to gushing to neurotic, and I deleted every single one. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to say to him and didn’t trust myself not to mess up any forward progress we had made. I chose instead to read until I grew sleepy, eventually putting head to pillow to dream of charging bulls; landfills full of cow corpses; and lying, hanging beauty queens.

  Brittany was next in line to have her likeness sculpted the following morning, but before I went to see her, I needed to call Chaz Linder, Pioneer Press reporter, to follow up on Kate’s money problems. To my surprise, he answered, though his voice sounded cottony with sleep.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mr. Linder. This is Mira James. We met at the Milkfed Mary press conference at the state fair last Monday.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  I did. The digital clock had told me just before I stepped outside the trailer to sit on the front steps so my call didn’t disturb Kennie and Mrs. Berns. “Six-thirty a.m.”

  He paused. When I didn’t answer, he said, “That’s really early.”

  I glanced around. The campgrounds were bustling. Since my fellow campers were mostly farmers, they had eaten breakfast already and were getting down to the business of the day. Animals needed to be fed and stalls cleaned out. I had gotten swept up into this world of farm time, and frankly, it made sense. Go to bed early and attack the morning. You missed all sorts of temptations and were introduced to new opportunities. From his tone of voice, though, Chaz didn’t agree. “Sorry. It won’t happen again. I’m calling to ask you a couple questions about Kate Lewis, if you don’t mind.”

  He coughed. “Fine.”

  “She’s being charged with embezzling?”

  “Yup. Maybe you should read the paper. Then you’d know we came out with an article yesterday stating that the attorney general is officially investigating the president of the State Fair Corporation.” He yawned. “Seven of her coworkers have been subpoenaed to testify. I think next week, actually.”

  “How much do they think she embezzled?”

  “No one knows. She’s been the final word on the books for over ten years. Hold on.” I heard the squeak of bed springs, footsteps, and the sound of a briefcase opening. “It was her frequent trips overseas that got someone’s attention. The AG thinks it was one of her employees who blew the whistle, disgruntled because his or her boss was living the high life while everyone else was working their fingers to the bone. Here’s the kicker, though.” His voice picked up as he warmed to his subject. “If not enough money comes in this year to cover questionable purchases Lewis made on the fair’s behalf, the corporation will have to file for bankruptcy. So even if she’s found guilty, it doesn’t help the fair out. They still need to come up with the money to pay their bills—it doesn’t matter if their president is the one who dug them into the hole.”

  “Bummer.” I was scribbling in my notepad, which was balanced on my knee. “So it wouldn’t be out of line for Kate or someone in her corporation to do something dramatic to bring people to the fair?”

  Paper rustled on the other end. “I know where you’re going with this. But doesn’t murdering a Milkfed Mary seem an extreme maneuver?”

  “You tell me. How many people have their fortunes tied up in the fair?”

  “More than a few.” He sounded fully awake now. “So tit for tat. Any new information on Ms. Pederson’s death?”

  “Nothing official.” I had never been much of a sharer, even as a kid, and so I withheld the fact that Ashley may have been dating Lars Gunder and that Janice Opatz was as warped as wood. There was something I could share that might benefit us both, however. “But I was thinking. Is it possible the poison that killed Ashley was put in her ice cubes? According to the police, the last thing to go in her mouth was a diet cola that others had seen her open, so the drink itself was probably not tampered with, but we don’t know where the cubes came from.”

  “Hmm. I’m not sure if they’ve looked into that angle, but who knows? I’ve got some connections in the police department. I’ll float that idea over there and call you back if I find anything out. And you call me if you find anything more. Deal?”

  “Deal.” I had a feeling both of us had our fingers crossed.

  Brittany’s head-carving drew a decent-sized crowd. I hadn’t seen any other kind at the fair, to be honest. The place was bustling from when it opened at six a.m. until it closed at midnight, and every corner of the fair (except the Haunted House and game stalls) brought back memories of an easier, happier time, even for those of us who had never experienced such a thing. Families shared fresh-cut French fries and rode the bumper boats and Ferris wheel, couples of all ages rode on Ye Old Mill Tunnel of Love ride to sneak kisses, and the “JFK Remembered” exhibition was a permanent display. Even the futuristic touches, like the alternative energy presentation, were connected to basic human needs of hearth, community, and food. I wondered if a person could take up permanent residence at the fair. Why couldn’t we live like this all year long? Probably they’d need to serve some healthier food, but otherwise, I bet a lot of people would be on board.

  I left the Dairy building to kill some time before Brittany was done posing and I could talk to her. No protestors were outside, no rampaging bulls, so I wandered and drank in the sights for a few hours. I was leaving Saturday, which meant I had less than three full days left here. It also meant I was going to see Johnny soon, which sent a tingle to all the right places. Walking past the Deep-fried Nut Goodies on a Stick booth near the time today’s butter-carving would be over, it occurred to me (generously, I might add) that Brittany would love one. I stood in line to make my purchase and decided I might as well buy a second one while I was there. Wouldn’t want to make Brittany feel uncomfortable eating in front of someone who had nothing. By the time I returned to the Dairy Barn, I was down to one deep-fried Nut Goodie—I figured it would be a waste of perfectly good grease to eat mine cold—which I handed to a grateful Brittany as she materialized from behind the blue curtain.

  “Man, thanks! I’m starving. All that butter in there just makes me think of pancakes.” She didn’t ask what kind of food was under all that powdered sugar and batter that I had handed her, instead digging right in. I admired an adventuresome eater, and as I watched her chew, I guessed she was the only Milkfed Mary who was truly milkfed. She was 5’6”, probably 145 pounds, which was healthy and average by normal standards, but on the outside range of acceptable in the beauty pageant industry. Like most people who didn’t waste time starving themselves, Brittany was good-natured. “Jeez, this is delicious! Is this a candy bar in here? Yum!”

  “Not just any candy bar. A Nut Goodie.” It was hard watching someone else eat it, even if I’d just devoured one, and I promised myself I’d have another later to ameliorate the situation. You only live at the State Fair once. “How’d the carving go?”

  “See for yourself.” She pointed at the slowly rotating booth behind us. Inside now were three butter heads, and only eight unfinished blocks of butter. I recoiled. Since when had I started considering a block of butter to be “unfinished?” Would I start seeing plain butter everywhere as not yet done? This butter is just sticks! I want my money back!

  “You look lovely. Your butter head and you. The sculptor here is turning out great work.” If you liked generic female faces beneath voluminous yellow hair circa 1970, that is. The sculpting job would probably be a lot easier if the contestants were allowed to have terrible disfigurements, like missing noses or a patch over their eye, so you could easily distinguish one finished product from another. As it was, Lana, C
hristine, and Brittany’s pretty heads looked nearly identical.

  “Yeah, we were kinda bummed it wasn’t Mrs. Gerritt. Everyone wants her to be the one who carves their butter head. But this new lady is nice. She made my teeth really even, hunh?”

  Sure enough, when Brittany’s head came around, each of her yellow teeth were perfectly square and aligned, if twice their natural size. It was hard not think of pancakes, chunky golden butter teeth melting off the top of the stack, when looking at them. “Nice. Do you want to sit down and finish that? I wanted to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

  Brittany looked around. I guessed she was searching for Janice Opatz, who was nowhere in sight. Shrugging, she led me outside to a bench with an empty corner. “Whaddya wanna know?”

  “You know I’m trying to find out what happened to Ashley, right?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m not having much luck. Have you heard anything?”

  She munched thoughtfully. “All of us kinda decided it must be someone from her hometown who did it.” She glanced at me quickly. “No offense. It’s just that none of us knew her long enough to have wanted to kill her, is all.”

  “I heard she was pretty snotty.”

  Brittany shrugged. “Most of us just got out of high school. We’re used to snotty girls.”

  “What about Lana?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I know that Ashley stole Lana’s boyfriend. Wouldn’t that make someone madder than usual?”

  She sat up and looked at me earnestly. “You don’t know Lana. She’s a sweetheart. She’s the one who looks out for all the rest of us. And we all feel so bad for her, you know?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t follow.”

  “With her mom losing the farm. She’s had a tough go of it ever since Lana’s dad died. That was a couple years before the pageant, I guess, and Lana and her mom did their best, but a few weeks ago they found out the bank is foreclosing on them. They just can’t pay their bills. That’s not even the saddest part, though. You should hear Lana talk about her father. She was a total daddy’s girl, and first they lose him and now they’re losing the family farm. It’s terrible sad.”